


Surveillance

by Imagination_Parade



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Comedy, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Humor, Inspired By Tumblr, Other, Romance, Surveillance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 13:42:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4103023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagination_Parade/pseuds/Imagination_Parade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All she has to do is open her custom-designed app to discover where in the world all of her charges are at any given moment. It's how she knows where Flynn runs off to, when Stone starts spending nights with Cassandra, and what kind of mischief Ezekiel is up to now. But how long can her secret surveillance stay a secret from the Librarians?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surveillance

**Author's Note:**

> This was partially inspired by a "Librarians + Texting Headcanons" post made on Tumblr by Jelli/timewarpingavengers/isnotthatstrange, which you can find here: http://timewarpingavengers.tumblr.com/post/119819040076/librarians-texting-headcanons if you'd like to check that out before reading.
> 
> As always, nothing here is mine. Enjoy!

She always knows where they are.

She doesn’t always know what they’re doing (though she can usually guess, based on the person and their location,) but she always knows where they are. She’s a Guardian in the 21st century, a well-connected one at that, in charge of four strong-willed, impetuous Librarians instead of just one. As soon as she decided to take on the job, she called up a friend who just happens to be a technology specialist for the government. Now, all she has to do is open a custom-designed app on her phone to instantly discover where in the world all of her charges, including Flynn, are at any given moment. The “kids” are much more competent now than they were when she established the traces; she was sure of her and Flynn’s decision to give them clippings books of their own, but even so, the traces remain. It’s not a lack of confidence, she reasons. It’s simple security.

It’s how she knows where Flynn has disappeared to when they’re mid-conversation, and she turns around, and he’s not there anymore, without so much as a word of goodbye. It’s how she knows not to worry when she wakes up alone and sees that Flynn’s just out picking up breakfast instead of halfway across the globe; it’s how she knows _to_ worry when Flynn’s run off to one of the more dangerous countries on their planet.

It’s how she’s able to not ask and just be a friend when Cassandra arrives late every few months, visibly shaken from another early morning doctor’s appointment, and it’s how she keeps a watchful eye on Ezekiel, who she knew from Day One would use the Library’s resources for activities she wouldn’t approve of, without completely giving up her life to supervise him.

It’s also how she knows when Stone starts secretly spending nights with Cassandra. She likes to think she would’ve suspected something was up with them anyway, even if she didn’t know for a fact that they, or at least their phones, were regularly together at four AM (because she _has_ made it a habit of checking at least once per night.) In an effort to conceal their changed relationship, their arrivals have become very methodical. They continue to arrive separately in the morning, alternating who shows up first, eight to nine minutes apart, like perfect clockwork.

The steaming cup of coffee in her palms warms her cold hands when Stone walks into the Library one morning. Baird checks her watch, noting the time.

“Mornin’, Colonel,” he says, dropping his stuff onto a chair.

“Morning,” she replies.

Stone wanders off to the kitchen for his own cup of coffee, and after a few minutes, Baird checks her watch again. The little blue dot that symbolizes Stone’s phone had been located right next to Cassandra’s little purple dot at 2:47 that morning, so she looks towards the doorway and mutters, “Any minute now…”

“Talkin’ to the Library again?” Stone teases as he returns to the main room of the Annex with two cups of coffee in his hands.

Before she can answer, Cassandra appears, right on time. “Hi, Colonel,” she says cheerfully. She turns to Stone and her smile gets just a little bit brighter. “Good morning.”

“Hey,” Stone nods. He holds out one arm, offering her a mug. “That’s for you.”

“Thanks,” Cassandra says, taking the mug and joining Baird at the table.

Baird suppresses a chuckle. If she were feeling sassier, she’d pester Stone about how he knew Cassandra would be arriving in time to drink the coffee before it got too cold, but she also thinks they deserve a lot of credit for professionalism. They’re better at keeping their romance out of the Library than Flynn is, who speaking of…

Before she can check her app to make sure her Librarian is still safely located in London, the text comes in.

_hey if you’re not busy i’m being arrested in turkey_

The text jolts her awake more than any cup of coffee ever could, and she abruptly stands from her place at the table.

“ _Damn it_ , how did I miss that?” she exclaims.

Cassandra’s eyes widen at her sudden outburst. “What’s wrong?” Cassandra asks.

“What time is it in Turkey right now?” she asks.

“10 hour time difference…” Stone mutters.

“So about 7:20 PM,” Cassandra answers. “What’s in Turkey?”

“She’s not happy,” Stone mutters. “It’s Jones.”

The green dot that symbolizes Ezekiel’s phone was still in Portland at 2:37 that morning and again at 7:30, when she had checked the app upon waking, so she knows he must not have slipped away too long ago. Armed with that new deduction, she crosses over to the globe by the Back Door and sees the coordinates are still set to Turkey. At least that makes her job a little easier. She pulls open the door to a city street and looks towards Stone and Cassandra, promising a quick return.

When she gets to Turkey, she pulls up her app (Flynn’s still in London, _thank goodness_ ) and uses it to find the jail they’ve dragged Ezekiel into. He’d been caught trying to disable a security system in a museum, and he doesn’t even look the slightest bit embarrassed or ashamed as the bailiff delivers him. Ezekiel collects his personal belongings before heading with Baird for the Back Door.

“Are you trying to kill me?” she asks.

“Uh…no?” Ezekiel replies, his voice colored with confusion.

“‘Hey, if you’re not busy, I’m being _arrested_ in _Turkey_?’” she quotes.

“I thought you’d appreciate it if I spared you the story and got straight to the point,” he says.

“I’d appreciate it more if you didn’t attempt things that get you arrested at 9 o’clock on a Monday morning,” she says. “Or, at all, really.”

Ezekiel, in a teasing tone, says, “Well, thanks for picking me up, Mum.”

“Call me Mom again, and I swear, I will leave you there next time,” Baird promises. Ezekiel just starts chuckling, which enrages her. “What?” she asks.

“I just like that we’re not bothering to act like this won’t happen again,” he replies.

That comment is why, a week later, when she checks her app in the middle of the afternoon on a day off and sees Ezekiel’s little green dot suddenly jump from Portland, Oregon to Turkey, she’s not surprised. She groans and hangs her head and leaves the confines of her apartment to head to the Back Door.

Yes, she always knows where they are, which is why she’s already sitting in the lobby of the Turkish jail by the time they drag Ezekiel in just as the clock on the wall strikes one o’clock in the morning. She widens her eyes and lets her head fall to the side as if to say, “Surprised to see me here?” when confusion crosses his face.

“I didn’t text you yet,” Ezekiel asserts. He chuckles and says, “I mean, I composed it before I got here, just in case, but I don’t think I hit send?”

“You didn’t,” she confirms with a straight face.

“So then how are you…?” Ezekiel starts to ask.

“I have my ways,” she answers simply. A bit of paperwork, and they’re on their way back to Portland. “So answer me this Jones: what compelled you to think attempting the same crime a second time after already being caught once was a good idea?”

“I thought I might have more luck on a weekend night,” he shrugs. With another chuckle, he adds, “Plus, you didn’t raise me to be a quitter.”

She narrows her eyes and glares at him. “Was that another Mom reference?”

Ezekiel holds his hands up in surrender and says, “You said it, not me. I just meant a little pair of handcuffs isn’t going to stop me. It’s more of a hiccup, really. I don’t give up that easily.”

“What happened to the guy who bails as soon as things stop being fun?” she asks. Part of her already knows what his answer is going to be, and that same part of her dreads even asking the question.

“Well, I guess this hasn’t stopped being fun yet,” he says, just as she expected he would.

A few days later, she’s walking back from the Library and finds Stone and Cassandra (who had arrived exactly eight minutes and twenty-five seconds apart that morning) sitting a hair’s breadth apart at the Annex table. Cassandra’s arm brushes against Stone’s as she reaches the edge of her journal page at the same time he turns the page in the book he’s reading, and their eyes meet as matching smitten grins cross their faces, neither of them noticing the Guardian at the edge of the room. Baird rolls her eyes. She’s going to have to tell them she knows about them eventually, but it’s almost become a game, watching them keep up this charade. Suddenly, another thought hits her.

“Where’s Jones?” she asks, breaking the tranquil silence that had surrounded the lovebirds at the table. They’d all been back in the Annex for about an hour.

Cassandra and Stone share a brief glance before Cassandra shrugs and Stone admits he’s not sure.

She whips out her phone, intending to play off checking the app as if she were just checking the time or texting the young Librarian (though if she’s being honest, she doesn’t need the app to tell her where he is right now,) but before she can do any of that, her phone buzzes once more.

_hey if you’re not busy i’m being arrested in turkey again_

“ _Seriously_?” she sighs out loud. Cassandra asks what’s wrong, just as she had done the first time that text had arrived in Baird’s Inbox. “Just a text from Jones,” she says.

The third time may not have been the charm for Ezekiel, but it is for her patience with him, this mission of his, and his nonchalant, heart-attack-inducing texts.

_Sorry. Busy. Be there when I can._

Stone and Cassandra’s phones buzz mere seconds after her text would have been delivered. She should’ve expected that, she thinks. Both of them move to pick up their phones.

“Don’t,” she sternly warns them.

“Ezekiel’s in jail in Turkey?” Cassandra cries, shooting up from her chair in a panic, phone in hand. “We can’t leave him there!”

“Yes, we can,” she assures her.

“I’m with Baird,” Stone chuckles, checking his phone to confirm he had received the same message. “Might do him some good.”

Cassandra lets out a wounded breath, looking between her Guardian and her secret boyfriend in disbelief.

“This is the third time in as many weeks, Cassandra,” Baird tells her. “He can wait a few hours.”

She wanders through the Back Door to Turkey at 11 PM that night, Portland time, just long enough for Ezekiel to have spent the Turkish night in jail. When he’s finally delivered to her, he’s put off about being “left to rot” overnight in a foreign jail cell.

“You’ve been busy for the last _seven hours_?” he asks as he collects his personal belongings.

“Crazy day,” she shrugged.

“I knew Stone wouldn’t come get me, but telling Cassandra to leave me here, too, was not cool,” Ezekiel insists. Baird sighs; she should’ve known Cassandra wouldn’t be able to ignore his text without providing an explanation for her absence.

“You’re getting rusty, Jones,” she taunts as they head for the Back Door again. “All we hear about is evading cops and hacking government systems…what happened to _that_ guy?”

“The security here is surprisingly top-notch,” Ezekiel says, the bravado returning to his demeanor. “But don’t worry; I’ll figure it out. I always do eventually.”

“The Library budget does not have endless room for your legal fees, and at the risk of sounding like your mother again, I thought a few hours in jail might serve as a deterrent,” Baird replies. “Clearly, I was wrong, but, I swear, if you send me _one more text like that_ …”

“Maybe you should focus your worries on some of your other charges because I’m not the only one sneaking around, you know,” he says, interrupting her.

She eyes him for a moment, attempting to determine what he knows, before saying, with a wave of her hand, “I already know about Stone and Cassandra; that’s been going on for months now.”

“ _Months_?” Ezekiel asks in surprise.

“At least three or four,” she says.

“They told you?” Ezekiel asks. Baird shakes her head no. “Then how do you know?”

“I have my ways,” she says again. “How do _you_ know?”

“I had the unfortunate experience of walking in on them horizontal, making out on Stone’s couch a few nights ago,” Ezekiel reveals. “Cassandra’s legs were bent around him, and Stone’s hand was up her skirt, and…”

“ _Okay_ , I really don’t need details,” Baird says, hurriedly cutting him off. She thinks about it for a minute and asks, “How did that even happen?”

“It was dark; I thought no one was home!” he swears.

“No, why were you at Stone’s place?”

“Remember that artifact we picked up from that Grecian museum last week?” Ezekiel asks. “The one Flynn let Stone keep because all the magic had been drained from it, and there was no way to put it back in?”

“Yeah,” she says.

“Well, I just think that artifact would look _much_ better in my penthouse,” he explains.

She scoffs in disbelief. “Cassandra’s apartment is barely big enough for her, yet _you_ have a _penthouse_.”

“Uh, yeah, do I need to remind you where you just picked me up from and what it is that I do?” Ezekiel boasts, symbolically pointing behind them as they walked.

“Are you kidding me?” she asks. Ezekiel laughs. “And going back to your earlier point, if you want to sneak around with someone, by all means, _go_ , sneak, have a great time, but until Stone and Cassandra’s sneaking around lands them in a Turkish prison three times in the same month, _you_ will continue to be my primary concern.”

“Lucky me,” Ezekiel mutters.

She checks the app more frequently than she ever has before in the next few weeks, but the little green dot stays out of Turkey.

* * *

They’re on a mission, and they’re about to split up again, only this time, it’s the boys going one way and the girls going the other, and the stakes are much more dicey than they were in the labyrinth so long ago. Baird notes that Cassandra and Stone keep cautiously glancing at each other as the plan is formulating. Both seem more than a little reluctant to agree to the splitting up arrangement she and Ezekiel have devised, but she knows that, deep down, they both know there’s no other viable option for getting all four of them home alive. She steps in the direction that she and Cassandra need to be heading and asks if everyone’s ready. Ezekiel nods. Stone and Cassandra stay silent and share another look.

“What?” she asks, giving them one last chance to get on board.

“Nothing, I…” Cassandra starts, trailing off when she can’t come up with a plausible explanation for hesitating.

“I just don’t know if we really need to…” Stone starts, also failing to come up with a reason why they shouldn’t follow the plan.

It’s the first time their feelings for each other have influenced a case, so she wants to be sympathetic, but as a building explodes behind her and everyone jumps, she knows it’s time; the jig is up.

“Oh, for the love of god,” she sighs. “If you want to kiss, just _kiss_ so we can get on with this.”

Stone and Cassandra’s heads rapidly travel from her to each other, silently asking if the other had let the Colonel in on their secret. When they realize that neither has, their heads shoot back to her.

“What?” Cassandra exclaims with wide eyes and a squeaky voice.

Stone points to Ezekiel. “Did you tell her?”

“I tried, but she already knew!” Ezekiel admits. “I mean, _really_ , where’s the fun in that?”

“Alright, I know how _he_ knows about that, but how do _you_ know about that?” Stone asks her.

“I have my ways,” she shrugs. Cassandra gasps and everyone jumps again as another explosion occurs a little too close for comfort to them. “We _really_ don’t have time for this, guys. We have to go _now_.”

A little, fearful noise escapes Cassandra’s throat as she grabs Stone and pulls him in for a passionate, the-world-may-be-ending-so-I-have-to-make-this-count kiss. Cassandra’s hand rests on his cheek as one of his immediately comes up to cradle her head in his palm, his other arm coming around to tightly hold her body against his, and Baird’s sure she sees their lips curl into smiles when they seemingly realize they’re doing this in full view of everyone else. Ezekiel lets out a noise of disgust and turns away as the kiss continues. She starts thinking she’s going to have to go over there and rip them apart when Stone pulls away and whispers something in Cassandra’s ear, maintaining his loving grip on her head. Cassandra nods as he pulls back.

“You too,” Cassandra whispers.

“Alright, you good?” Baird asks. “Can we please get a move on?”

Stone gently kisses Cassandra’s forehead and nods; she unravels herself from his protective hold and stands up straight, turning towards Baird.

“Okay, but we are going to talk about _your ways_ later,” Cassandra asserts, stomping over to Baird with confident strides, her arms swinging.

“If there is a later…” Ezekiel mutters.

There is a later, and when the girls arrive back at the Annex, twenty minutes later than they had agreed to meet back up, the boys are already there, and a bruised Cassandra power runs into Stone’s arms.

“Oh, thank god,” he mutters, quickly rubbing ash from a stray explosion off of her pale face before pulling her into a tight embrace.

Baird brushes off her own clothes as Flynn strolls in eating an apple and takes in his team’s disheveled appearances.

“Jenkins told me you were out; how’d it go?” Flynn asks cheerily, making his way across the room to stand next to his Guardian.

She’s about to ask if he’s kidding when a scoff from Stone and a tired whimper from Cassandra draw his attention to the couple on the other side of the room. They’re still standing in each other’s arms, and Flynn’s face lights up a bit as he looks towards her.

“Do we know about them now?” he asks without lowering his voice at all.

Cassandra’s eyes widen again, and Stone’s arms drop from around her body.

“You knew, too?” Stone asks in disbelief.

“And here we thought we were being so discreet,” Cassandra mutters, looking over at Stone again.

“You were,” Baird insists. “Remarkably so, really.”

“Then _how_ did you know?” Cassandra asks, crossing her arms against her chest.

“The app told her,” Flynn shrugs.   

Flynn’s casual statement draws the immediate attention of all three of their charges. Baird glances over at him, too, for a very different reason. She could smack him.

“What app?” Ezekiel asks from his slumped position at the Annex table.

“The app that tells her where all of us are,” Flynn replies.

Her eyes narrow in his direction. She’d told him about the app from the get-go, showing it to him in bed one night, a decision she was now strongly regretting. Flynn, of course, had had no problem with it, claiming that anything that allowed him to maintain a bit of the independence he’s grown accustomed to without causing her undue stress was a-okay as far as he was concerned. She’s sure she remembered to mention she wouldn’t be telling the “kids,” information he had clearly, in that moment, forgotten.

“ _What_?” Cassandra exclaims again.

“What does that mean?” Stone grumbles.

She shoots him a death glare, a silent warning should he choose to continue, even though she knows her days of silent, secret surveillance are over, but he doesn’t notice and keeps on talking.

“She has this app; she pulls it up and it shows her where we all are. My dot’s red, though I really think it should be a heart instead of a dot,” he says, glancing at her briefly. “But anyway…Jones, you’re green; Stone’s blue, and Cassandra’s purple, and when the blue dot and the purple dot started consistently ending up in the same place in the middle of the night…

Cassandra’s mouth slowly drops open during Flynn’s explanation; Stone’s scowl grows tighter across his face, and Ezekiel sits up a little bit straighter, eyes darting between Flynn and Baird.

Flynn chuckles and finishes with, “Well…it became pretty obvious what was going on.”

Upon the completion of his elucidation, all three Librarians shift their gazes from Flynn to Baird. This time, she does smack him, harder than she should across the arm. His hand immediately flies to the wounded flesh, but within seconds, he squeezes his lips shut, the realization of what he’d just done dawning on him. Silence hangs in the air among them.

“That’s how you got to the jail before I did that second time,” Ezekiel finally says, piecing things together. “You knew I was in Turkey, and you assumed it’d go badly. Thanks for the confidence, Colonel.”

“I was right,” she says, defending herself.

“Maybe this time, but I don’t like that you _assume_ I’ll get caught,” he huffs. “It’s like you have no faith in me!”

She chooses to leave it there, lest she admit she doesn’t actually have much confidence in him, before Ezekiel can get mad about the app itself instead of her reaction to it. He slumps back onto the table, seemingly satisfied with the conversation himself, and she shifts her gaze to a still-dumbfounded Cassandra and a still-angry Stone.

"So our secret was never really _our_ secret?” Cassandra asks, gesturing between herself and Stone.

“It took a few nights for me to figure it out,” she admits. She looks towards Ezekiel and offers, “And Ezekiel didn’t know.”

“ _Oh_ , well…” Cassandra says sarcastically, as if that changes _everything_.

She stops there, and Baird thinks she’s still too speechless to properly find words. Stone, however, just turns around and walks out of the Annex without a word. It’s a few seconds before Cassandra notices he’s gone. She glances behind her to find him and does a double-take when he’s not where she thinks he should be. Cassandra whips around just as he exits the main room of the Annex. “Wh– Stone! Honey, it’s not _that_ bad,” Cassandra calls, fiercely running after him.

They all forgive easily, but Stone’s blue dot disappears from her app almost immediately and almost never returns. When it does appear, she can safely assume he’s temporarily using the GPS on his phone for his own personal reasons, but he was never one she really worried about anyway.

Cassandra’s purple dot goes in and out; sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not, which, she thinks, due to the timing of the disappearances and reappearances of the purple dot, does absolutely nothing but _highlight_ when Cassandra and Stone are together. It’s amusing, she thinks, that Cassandra seems to believe the app can actually tell her what they’re up to and not just where they are.

Most surprisingly, the green dot symbolizing Ezekiel’s phone is always there, whether he’s up to mischief or simply hanging out in Portland. She walks into the Annex one morning and finds him sitting at the table.

“Hey, Colonel,” he says. “I’d ask if you were surprised to see me here so early, but…I know you’re not.”

“You know,” she says, pulling up a seat across from him. “You could turn off your GPS, and I wouldn’t be able to track you, but you haven’t done that. Why?”

Ezekiel shrugs. “It was kind of nice that you were already there when they were hauling my ass into that Turkish jail. So much more time efficient,” he says.

With a roll of her eyes and a sigh, she stands again, deciding to start her morning with the punching bag.

An hour later, she steps away, wipes off her face, takes a long drink from her water bottle, and pulls out her phone. Old habits die hard, and she pulls up the app.

The red dot is still in her apartment, and she knows Flynn’s probably still sleeping off an exhausting case (and an even more exhausting night.) Cassandra’s purple dot is in the Annex; no surprise there. The blue dot is, as expected, nowhere to be found on the map, and the green dot?

The green dot is back in Turkey.


End file.
